Re: [syndication] NetNewsWire's referer

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@hotmail.com>]

> Is it just me, or does netnewswire set its referer to always be
>    http://ranchero.com/software/netnewswire/

At some point Userland decided that using a URI here was a good idea.  To
confuse things further, Userland decided to put a different URI in there based
on their community server concept.  Unfortunately those servers don't seem to
perform redirects based on that URI, at least not consistently.

It's a good question, though, what should a reader program present as it's
referring URL?  Should it present anything at all?  Should it record 'where' the
user discovered the feed?  Should it list a web page?  I suppose most folks
would be inclined to list their own page.  But others, rightly so, would prefer
to have nothing listed at all, or a generic one.

It would be good if the tools allowed user control over it.  Radio has the
stored preference but no UI to control it.

The use of a referral URL seems to be based on the idea that using the normal
access log isn't appropriate or available.  Some online services do not expose
the access log to the user.  The Userland Manila-based services are one such
example.  The operator of a given site /cannot/ access the HTTP access log.
They can, however, access a referral log (mispelled no less).  Thus the
rationale of using the referral log as a means to satisfy user log fetishes.  So
following this circuitous logic one is left with grafting /something/ into the
RSS reader interface to have it appear in the logs.

One is left asking isn't this what the user-agent log is supposed to accomplish?
That is also not made visible to most hosted sites.  So faking the whole thing
in the referral log was/is an easier means to feed the lust for log monitoring.
Talk about a hack.

-Bill Kearney